


where painfully and with wonder

by seventhstar



Series: a covenant with a bright blazing star [22]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha Katsuki Yuuri, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Regency, M/M, Misunderstandings, Oblivious Katsuki Yuuri, Omega Victor Nikiforov, Regency, Regency Romance, Sexual Frustration, Story within a Story, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Walking In On Someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 15:20:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17921336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: Yuuri slams the book closed and lets it drop. It lands softly on the sheet he is sitting on; he and Viktor are picnicking by the lake. In theory, Yuuri had thought the lake romantic. In practice, he is glad that he is well away from anyone else who might hear him reading this.“Why did you stop?”“It’s obscene,” Yuuri croaks. “Is it appropriate for me to read this to you?”“We’re married, would you prefer I have it read to me by someone else?”“But it’s explicit!”“So?” Viktor rolls his eyes. “Are you truly shocked by this? It’s very tame.”“Ah.”That certainly paints a vivid picture in Yuuri’s mind. He is not sure whether he likes it or not.[part of an ongoing series of fics, telling the story of poor and scandalous trademan's son viktor nikiforov's marriage of convenience to the reclusive lord katsuki]





	where painfully and with wonder

Jealousy must become Yuuri, because Viktor has not left his side all day.

Yuuri has no complaints. He and Viktor walked to the post office, where Yuuri delivered some long overdue letters and Viktor made conversation with the man who took the post. They talked about roads and about how magic-powered coaches could shrink England for every man, if they ever ceased to be more than fictions peddled by swindlers. They stopped at the local baker, where Yuuri bought Viktor a local specialty.

“The flour is made of rice?”

“Yes, there is some Japanese influence here, because of my family.”

“It’s delicious.”

As they are wandering back towards the house, arm in arm, Yuuri shoving a second bun into his mouth, Viktor brightens.

“You can make sparks now?”

“Mostly.”

“Then we can progress! I will teach you to make a bolt.”

“Is that safe?”

“Can you put out a fire?”

“So it is not safe.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I am not afraid of fire,” Yuuri assures him. “But I think you will be disappointed. I have not a talent for magic.”

“You lifted a cow,” Viktor says incredulously. He redirects Yuuri away from the house and across the lawn.

“Not with magic.”

“I—” Viktor colors. Yuuri watches his throat as he swallows. “Well, you maintain the house yourself.”

“It’s very expensive to have it maintained. Besides, the individual spells are not difficult. They merely have to be fixed and linked together.”

“You can fix and link hundreds of different spells, but you have no talent? That is not sound. Come, I arranged this for your lesson.” Viktor has led him to an odd construction. There is a circle of wire, parallel to the ground, supported by four stone pillars. Four wires have been wrapped around the circle and then twisted together in the center to form a spiraling tower.

“What is it?”

“It’s for you to practice. The metal will conduct the lightning very well.”

“When did you do this?”

“Chris helped me.” Viktor winks. “Shall we begin?”

The following lesson is grueling. Naturally, Viktor could sustain a bolt of lightning before he could grow facial hair, and he seems bemused that Yuuri cannot do the same. His confidence in Yuuri, if misplaced, is a compliment to him. He must look much more competent than he is.

The task is simple: the sparks that Yuuri makes are to be fed into the metal, where they will be trapped. If Yuuri can generate enough of them, he can then use the metal frame as a model, and lift them off, as one unit, like the strands of lightning VIktor manipulated during the storm.

“This is the step that kills most lightning mage apprentices, you know. Trying to control a force of nature.”

“Like this,” Viktor says, ignoring Yuuri’s words entirely. He puts his hands on Yuuri’s shoulders and pushes the magic through him; Yuuri relaxes, trying to let Viktor use him as a conduit. “You can’t control it and repel it all at once. Can you feel that?”

Yuuri can feel a buzzing under his skin. “Feel what?”

“There’s a little lightning inside your body,” Viktor whispers.

“There is?”

“Haven’t you read Galvani’s work?”

“He’s widely considered a mad man!”

“Am I a mad man? Try it for yourself. If you have perfect alignment, the lightning will do what you want.”

Yuuri tries, but when Viktor is not working through him, he cannot sense it at all. He showers the wire circle in sparks, but the trick of lifting them out eludes him. By the end of their lesson, he is frustrated with his lack of progress, and Viktor is panting.

“Are you tired?” Yuuri asks.

“I’ve been keeping you from eletrocuting yourself! Aren't you tired?”

“No.”

Viktor sighs and abruptly leans heavily against Yuuri’s side. Yuuri has to catch him before he falls onto the grass. He supposes it makes sense; Yuuri has always had more endurance than his classmates, and keeping him from killing himself must be taxing work. He pulls Viktor upright.

“Let’s go back,” he offers. “We can read the next chapter.”

* * *

 

 _The Duke took up Gertrude_ _’s days, and he took up her nights, and before long he began to appear in her dreams as well. At first she dreamed merely of dances, and card parties, and long rides through the park in the Duke’s curricle, but then they took a strange and unwelcome turn. Gertrude, in coming to town, had been exposed to knowledge of which she had been kept innocent before._

 _One night she dreamed that she was the Duke_ _’s wife, and they were in his bedchamber, which looked strangely like her parent’s bedchamber at home, except that everything was gilded._

 _He took her hands._ _“My love,” he called her, and kissed her._

_The Gertrude that was awake would never have allowed such liberties, but the Gertrude of dreams responded with abandon. She leaned back, to allow him to press his mouth more firmly against her. She put a hand on his chest. His heart beat fast beneath her palm._

_When he had had his fill of her mouth, he kissed lower, over her throat and her exposed bosom. Suddenly Gertrude was wearing only the flimsiest of nightdresses, with a gaping neckline and straps that slipped down her shoulders. His tongue lapped at her skin like she was flavored ice, and then he took one of her nipples into his mouth and sucked—_

* * *

 

Yuuri slams the book closed and lets it drop. It lands softly on the sheet he is sitting on; he and Viktor are picnicking by the lake. In theory, Yuuri had thought the lake romantic. In practice, he is glad that he is well away from anyone else who might hear him reading this.

“Why did you stop?”

“It’s obscene,” Yuuri croaks. “Is it appropriate for me to read this to you?”

“We’re married, would you prefer I have it read to me by someone else?”

“But it’s explicit!”

“So?” Viktor rolls his eyes. “Are you truly shocked by this? It’s very tame.”

“Ah.”

That certainly paints a vivid picture in Yuuri’s mind. He is not sure whether he likes it or not.

“Well, if it offends you—”

“The content doesn’t offend me,” Yuuri says, hastily, as he has grasped that Viktor is not really talking about the book. He has to remind himself that Viktor’s conversation with Chris had not suggested any interest of that kind on Viktor’s part; in fact, it had suggested the opposite. “ But don’t you think it’s ridiculous that she dreams about him? She hates him.”

“Does she? She says she hates him. But people say things they don’t mean.” Viktor leans in. “People think things they don’t mean. Should I read to you?”

“What?”

“If your sense of propriety will not allow it,” Viktor reaches for the book and pages through it until he finds where Yuuri left off, “I would be happy to—”

“I will do it.” He will not have Viktor think Yuuri is that stiff. Nor does he think he can have Viktor read him an explicit account of an explicit dream without becoming stiff. He accepts the book, and then, thinking better of it, turns the page to read ahead. “This—it goes on for ten pages!”

“Oh, excellent.” Viktor rests his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder. He is draped over Yuuri from behind, like a greatcoat, except that Yuuri does not wear greatcoats in summer and has never worried about his coat’s arms around him. “Remind me again what the Duke was sucking?”

Yuuri shuts his eyes and does not think about a certain shade of pink.

Ten pages can be very long, particularly when three of them are devoted to the Duke sucking various parts of Gertrude’s anatomy—Yuuri learns some very alarming euphemisms, and from the way Viktor snorts when he stutters it must be obvious that Yuuri does not know what all of them mean—and the following three describe in great detail both Gertrude and the Duke’s naked bodies. Yuuri is bewildered that Gertrude manages to compare herself to a peach, alabaster, the first ray of the rising sun, and warm milk all at once, as none of those things are alike. Does anyone have such raptures about their own skin? Yuuri cannot ever recalled having compared his to any food stuff at all.

Pages seven through ten begin with penetration and end with an entire page’s worth of climaxes. There is a passage so laden in metaphor that at first Yuuri thinks an actual musket has been fired and both of them have been killed mid-coitus. Frankly, he thinks that Viktor is right, and a murder would improve it.

By the time Yuuri is reading the final words, he is very, very aware that Viktor is breathing against his ear, and that he is holding onto Yuuri’s waistcoat very tightly.

“Well?” Viktor asks. “What do you think of that?”

“It does not seem anatomically sound,” Yuuri says faintly. He dares not comment any further on the content. “And the author is so impressed with themselves that parts of it are quite obscure. Clearly this book is not popular on its literary merits.”

Viktor’s grip on him loosens.

“And also,” Yuuri says, “Gertrude is more inconsistent than ever. She was opposed to him because he was degenerate; she has not changed her mind.”

“That is a unique interpretation.”

“I think the author has merely shoehorned this dream in to create a scandal. It—it has nothing to do with the plot at all.”

“It is meant to be enjoyed,” Viktor says. Yuuri can feel his warm breath against his neck; Viktor’s scent is very close. “Like opening a fine wine to drink alone. Like velvet. Don’t you ever indulge yourself?”

Yuuri is sitting on the lawn nearly in Viktor’s lap, in his arms, blushing after reading him pornography. If that is not indulgent, he is not sure what is. Viktor’s hand has slipped down his stomach and is now dangerously close to his thigh. The heat of the summer sun is sweltering, despite the breeze. Suddenly Yuuri is achingly thirsty.

“Let’s go inside.”

Yuuri untangles himself with some effort and starts back towards the house. Viktor follows at his heels, book under his arm; he looks as flushed as Yuuri feels. Maybe he did find the chapter scandalous after all. Or maybe he’s spent too much time out in the sun. But even in the cool interior of the house, Viktor still looks unaccountably pink.

“Are you all right?” Yuuri asks. “You look a little warm.” He lays his hand against Viktor’s forehead. “Do you have a fever?”

“Perhaps I should lie down,” Viktor offers.

Yuuri is immediately alarmed. Viktor resented being bedbound the whole of his recovery; for him to willingly want to go rest must mean he feels truly unwell.

“Yes, you should. I’ll go make some tea. Should I call a doctor?”

“Should you…” Viktor stares at him. Possibly Dr. Lee has put him off doctors for life. “No. Excuse me.”

He storms off; Yuuri hears him on the stairs, unusually loud. _Maybe I should make the tea willowbark,_ Yuuri thinks, _he does seem feverish._ The kitchen is well-stocked with herbs and medicines, still, and he finds the tin marked willowbark easily. He leaves a pot to steep as he rummages around for a tray and a teacup.

As he takes them upstairs, Makkachin and Vicchan pass him as they descend. The bedroom door has been left ajar.

Yuuri reaches for the doorknob. He hears a noise like a moan from within. Thinking better of it, he knocks.

There’s no answer. _Maybe it was the wind,_ Yuuri thinks, and he opens the door.

It is not the wind.

He slams the door closed, heart pounding. The tea tray crashes on the floor. The hand VIktor had over his mouth was to adequate to muffle him—his toes were curled—at least, with his hand moving furiously over his cunt, Yuuri hadn’t actually seen—

“Yuuri?”

“Excuse me,” Yuuri says, strangled. “I—have some pressing business. Right now.”

**Author's Note:**

> revised version of learning to make fire might be up today (i'll update the day posted when i do that, but i don't think you'll get a notification if you're subscribed.)
> 
> if it's not up today, i'm traveling next week--spring break!!!--so it might not be until two weeks from today. ideally, if i don't get it up today, i'll post it with the chapter after it so that y'all can read them together without confusion.
> 
> after that, uh, i'm in the middle of an extremely intense neuro unit, so i would not expect anything from me until that's done in april. sorry!
> 
> (the updated version of learning to make fire is completely different, fyi, so you'll want to read it.)


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